


Watchmaker

by NiCad



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Euthanasia, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 21:05:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3951730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NiCad/pseuds/NiCad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whirl doesn’t handle most things well.  Add Springer’s zero point to the list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watchmaker

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Recharge for the beta. I still claim any errors.

And I still believe that I cannot be saved   
Bullet with Butterfly Wings   
Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins 

 

Springer had always been fair with him.

That was a lot more than what just about anyone else could say.

That was what made this so hard.

Whirl stood next to Springer’s inert body, watching the unchanging status displays of the multitudes of life-support systems that sustained the once-powerful leader of the Wreckers. Reduced to little more than a stone, the triple changer hadn’t so much as twitched a finger since the evac from G-9. The warrior who had charged fearlessly into battle for millennia now lay completely helpless, completely ripped to shreds, completely dependent on the mindless churning of ventilators and chargers and energon re-circulators and whatever else was needed when one could do absolutely nothing for oneself. And for all that, Springer’s life signs never bothered to return the favor with a single blip above comatose baseline.

It was pitiful.

And if there was one thing that Springer had never been, pitiful was it.

Whirl looked down to the floor at the case he had stolen from Roadbuster’s workshop.

* * *

“I’m cutting you from the roster for the Garrus-9 mission.”

“What?” Whirl turned to face Springer, standing on the observation deck of Debris. “You can’t cut me. With almost everyone else out? You’re gonna just saunter in there with Twin Twist, Top Spin, and Perceptor?” He made no effort to mask the incredulity in his tone.

“That’s exactly why I’m cutting you.” Springer did not turn to face him, arms folded over his chest, continuing to look out at the panoramic display. “I have to bring in new recruits with almost everyone else out, and you don’t play well with rookies.”

“Seriously?” Whirl threw his arms up in frustration. “That’s bullshit!”

Springer arched an optic ridge in Whirl’s direction, but otherwise remained still. “Tell me one case where I’m wrong on that.”

“That’s… that’s…” Whirl paced the deck. “That doesn’t matter! That’s just hazing! That’s how it’s done!”

Springer returned his gaze to the display. “Hazing is one thing. Putting three ‘bots out of commission for two months is another. We don’t have that kind of time.”

“Oh, come on! It took you a month to recover from what we did to you when you joined this circus. I was glitching out for at least three after the beating I got. If you’re worried about time, the initiation can wait ‘til after the mission. I mean, if any of them survives it.”

“Just because it was done to us doesn’t make it right. Either way, this mission is too much of a cluster as it is. I want it simple. You make things… not simple. You’re out for this one, Whirl. You’ll be back on the roster once the rookies know what to expect of you.”

“Or they’re all dead. Whichever comes first, right?”

Whirl turned and left the deck before Springer could dismiss him.

* * *

Whirl reached down and picked up the case. It was heavier than he expected. Until he figured out the heavy shielding the case was made of, anyway.

For all of Roadbuster’s lack of formal education, Whirl had to admit that the mech was good at what he did.

Building deadly shit and making sure that shit didn’t roll when it wasn’t supposed to.

He looked again at Springer.

At what used to be Springer, he reminded himself.

Because that was the only reason that what he was about to do wasn’t murder.

Whether or not he was, in fact, a murderer already was subject to one’s definition of the act, and he had to admit that the definition had grown a little murky to him over a few million years of war. But what he was going to do, right now, did not fit any definition of murder that he knew.

Killing… well, maybe. But you could only kill what was alive. So that depended on one’s definition of “life.”

He’d heard the rumors. He’d seen the haunted looks on Ratchet’s and Kaput’s faces whenever they came in to complete another pointless assessment of Springer’s condition, trying to decide what to do, trying to decide how much effort to throw away on a lost cause. You didn’t need to be a Prowl or a Perceptor to know that the chances of coming back from a zero point were pretty much nil. A spark refusing to animate its own body. Might as well be a corpse already. Mindless and propped up by mindless machines was no life. So this may not even be killing.

But it sure as hell wasn’t murder.

This was, at worst, euthanasia.

* * *

Whirl shuffled into the cramped room that served as Springer’s office aboard Xantium. Getting called to The Office usually wasn’t a good thing. It meant that whatever Springer had to say to you was something he figured you wouldn’t want the others to hear, and Whirl had no doubts about the topic of this discussion. The leader of the Wreckers looked up and pointed to the chair on the other side of his desk. “Have a seat.”

Whirl sat. Then immediately stood back up. “Prowl had it coming! After everything he’s done, after all the times we’re sent out like attack drones and then collared and scolded when we actually complete the mission…”

“I know,” Springer responded, calmly.

“And you,” Whirl seethed, leaning over the desk and pointing a claw. “You, of all people… you call me off? You’ve _decked_ him!” Whirl’s voice reached a fevered pitch.

“Over what turned out to be nothing. And believe me, I paid for it.” Again, Springer motioned to the chair, doing his best to placate the loosest cannon under his command. “You’re just gonna have to trust me on this. Lay off. Let me handle it. I’ll let you know when it’s time to get nasty.”

“Yeah, I’ve played that game before.” The words were out before Whirl even realized they were in his head. He stopped short, totally not wanting to have that conversation.

To both his relief and his horror, Springer nodded knowingly. “I know about what happened to you. I know about the Senate. I know about your jail room jaunts with Megatron and Impactor. I won’t pretend to understand what it’s done to you, but I’ll do my best to keep that context in mind for when you do something really atrocious. I also won’t sell you out. But when I tell you I’ll handle something, you just need to get your cranky can out of the way and let me do it.”

* * *

Whirl’s claws clicked over the catches on the case, but didn’t open it. Not quite yet.

He focused on Springer’s ruined, motionless carcass. Surrounded on all sides by life support.

This was not an atrocity.

“Just get out of the way and let me do this,” he said to no one in particular.

* * *

Springer had never hit him. Even when provoked, and Whirl had done his damndest to provoke his commander on multiple occasions, Springer had always used as little force against him as possible. The one time Whirl tried to take a swing at him, the big green ‘bot had simply caught Whirl’s fisted claw one-handed in mid-air, turned his arm around his back, pinned what served as his hand to the back of his opposite hip, and voiced a single command. “Weapons locker. Now.”

Springer always tailored his punishments to the wrong-doer, rarely sending them to the brig. Usually it was doing some task that the offender hated, but would be good for them. For Whirl, it was either free-fall drills or cleaning everyone else’s weapons. A task that, for any normal ‘bot, would have been little more than boring monotony, but for Whirl was a maddening clicking and slipping of taloned claws. Nonetheless, he had to grudgingly admit (he was doing a lot of admitting right about now), that his manual dexterity had improved greatly under Springer’s management of his own misdeeds.

* * *

With renewed determination, Whirl opened the case with one claw and grabbed the sparkeater weapon with the other, a maneuver that would have been impossible in the days under Impactor’s command. The mechanical sparkeater snapped and writhed around his claw as if it was eager to get to work. Turning, he pressed it to Springer’s chest and the sparkeater fervently wrapped itself around the cold armor.

“It should’ve been me,” he whispered. “It would’ve been me, but you cut me from the team. You brought this on yourself, you self-righteous gashole. Could things have gone any _more_ wrong with me in the mix? It should have been me unloading that glorious weapon into Overlord. And when he’d try to rip _my_ face off? Hah! The Senate beat him to it!” Whirl shuddered as laughter rippled through him. “It should be me lying on this damn table. Only they would never think about going to such lengths to save me. They’d have done the right thing and just let me go. They should’ve done the same to you. They never do what’s right. They only do what makes them feel better. I tried to tell you that. You thought you were listening. You thought you got it, but you didn’t. Now I have to clean up their mess. Just like old times. How’s that for context, Springer? Is that going to matter if they pin this on me?” The sparkeater hummed and snapped, as if to confirm that it didn’t matter a damn bit.

Indeed, the sparkeater made quite a racket. Between that and his own monologue, Whirl never heard Roadbuster enter the room. Never noticed the huge fist that came down and crushed the side of his head, rendering him unconscious.

* * *

Whirl stepped into his quarters to pack up. Another no-win situation. Another failure. Another termination of assignment.

Roadbuster had apparently not agreed with his assessment of Springer’s prognosis, nor his solution to it. Off to prison.

He was to pack his things and then wait in the brig until the transport showed up.

The sight of the broken clock on the shelf stopped him cold.

* * *

Whirl entered Springer’s office.  Springer sat cross-ways to his desk, feet propped up on the corner and long legs crossed at the ankles as he scrolled through a data pad. Whirl let the door close behind him. “What did I do now?”

Springer pointed to a clock sitting on the near corner of the desk. “I found that on Nebulos. Abandoned military complex.”

Whirl picked it up and took a sharp breath. It was gear-driven, golden workings exposed, the remains of the clear enclosure still clung in bits and pieces to the outer frame. The face was a deep midnight blue with the hours engraved in a translucent material that shifted colors depending on the angle it was viewed at. “It’s… it’s beautiful.”

Springer shrugged. “Doesn’t work. The area I found it in took a concussion blast hard enough to blow out every window in a five-klick radius, so I’m guessing that’s what put it out of commission. Thought you might like it, maybe fix it up sometime.”

Whirl transferred the clock to one claw, raising the other in Springer’s direction, rage beginning to boil. Was this a joke?

Springer waved it off. “Yeah, yeah. But I know that you know that Ratchet can give you new hands whenever you want them. Probably not as good as the ones you were forged with, but y’know… _hands_. I figure you’ve got your reasons for not taking him up on it yet. But… when you’re ready…” He gestured to the clock.

Well. Fair enough.

Now, the clock sat still on its shelf. As still and motionless as the ‘bot who had given it to him. The rage boiled up again and Whirl picked it up, hauling off to smash it to the floor.

He stopped, claw raised high over his head. If Roadbuster could keep vigil over Springer like he did, keep the faith like he did, the least Whirl could do would be to not smash up the damn clock.

It didn’t mean he thought he was wrong.

It didn’t mean he thought Springer might actually pull through.

Just that, maybe… maybe he could just get out of the way and let Springer do what he had to do on his own.

And maybe someday he’d fix the stupid thing.

* * *

Prowl scrolled through the datapad, frowning.

You’d think if a sociopath could only do one thing right, killing his comatose former commander would’ve been it.

True, Whirl had failed spectacularly the last time he’d actually been ordered to assassinate someone, and the Senators were fools to think he’d stood a chance against Megatron. But the odds of him taking it upon himself to euthanize Springer if given the chance had been astronomical, and on that, he did not disappoint.

Leave it to Roadbuster to blunder in and render the odds to dust.

Prowl’s hands gripped the edge of his desk for several moments, and then he forced himself to relax.

Maybe this was for the best. Springer would’ve been one hell of a martyr for the Wreckers. But maybe it was better to let things take their natural course, given Ratchet’s diagnosis. A quiet fade to oblivion, noiselessly pale in the collective memories of the Autobots until he finally flickered out under Roadbuster’s watchful but useless guard out at Debris. Distant. Out of the way.

Prowl smiled.

Odds were still on his side, and the thorn that had been lodged there for so long would finally be removed.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Performance Evaluations](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5909026) by [NiCad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NiCad/pseuds/NiCad)




End file.
